Any day that starts with the need to sweep snow off the wood pile is unlikely to turn out to be a good day, but it did inspire similar cleaning efforts, this time aimed at a pile of recent questions.

Q. Is Mormonism a cult or a regular religion?

A. The usual difference is that a cult dominates every aspect of the believer’s life, as opposed to the usual sleeping through an occasional Sunday sermon and muttering grace before meals. So just about any religion could be a cult if you get too deeply enmeshed in it.

The easy distinction is the university. That is, if the denomination operates an accredited institution of higher education, it’s not a cult. The Mormon Church owns and operates Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. It is respected and accredited, and that should settle the cult issue.

Q. You’re a Democrat, so you must be happy with the new congressional district boundaries, right?

A. Alas, Chaffee County is still stuck with Colorado Springs in the rotten-borough 5th District, created 40 years ago as a safe Republican seat. Unless lightning strikes, we will be represented for the next decade by Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican and zygote zealot. There is a rumor that he once visited Chaffee County, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. Someday I’ll figure out what crime we committed to deserve another decade of abysmal representation.

Q. How do you feel about Colorado’s new fracking regulations? Or should it be fraccing?

A. “Fracking” seems right, by analogy with picnicking and trafficking. As for the regulations, requiring disclosure of injected chemicals is a good start, but there should not be an exception for “trade secrets.” It is, after all, our water that could be affected, and we deserve full disclosure.

Also, the state should require tracer chemicals in every injection. That way, if things get loose, it should be easier to find the origin.

And if fracking is as safe as the drillers tell us it is, these requirements shouldn’t affect production at all. Which would be fine by me — we have a gas furnace, and I’d like the stuff to be abundant and cheap, especially this time of year.

Q. How on earth will struggling Colorado come up with the $3 billion or so required every year to conform to the court’s Lobato decision?

A. The heart of the Lobato case is that the state constitution requires a “thorough and uniform” system of public education, and what we have is neither. Thus the court wants the legislature to act to bring the system into line with constitutional requirements.

But wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier just to change the state constitution to require an “incomplete and inconsistent” system of public education? We already have that in place, so it wouldn’t cost anything to implement. Plus, we amend our state constitution frequently anyway.

Q. The National Transportation Safety Board has called on states to ban texting and cellphone talking by drivers, as they get distracted and become a safety hazard. Do you think this is right?

A. It doesn’t go far enough. The last time I was almost hit by a vehicle being driven by a cellphone user, it was a bicycle. And texting pedestrians can be a menace too, since they walk right into you on sidewalks and in stores. Clearly we have a ways to go toward a safe environment.

Q. What do you think of Tim Tebow?

A. He saves many Coloradans a lot of time, since these days, you can get by with watching only the last two minutes of a Broncos game.

Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.

There’s been way more than enough written about Donald Trump’s battle with kneeling football players — especially with a major crisis underway in Puerto Rico — but one thing really does bother me that’s been revealed during this brouhaha: the extent to which many Americans have accepted the anti-democratic and false equivalence of patriotism and the military.